Skip to main content
Main

Ham Sauce

A sauce made by stewing ham and chives in butter, then adding brown sauce and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chive and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,122 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Ham Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stew the chopped ham and chives in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Add the Brown Sauce and lemon juice, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chive + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chive + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean ham
Provides savoury meaty flavour to the sauce base.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the ham and chives and adds richness.
Brown sauce
Forms the body of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Chives
Add a fresh, mild onion-like aroma.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil after adding Brown Sauce and lemon juice. Once the Brown Sauce and lemon juice are added, boiling must be controlled so the sauce thickens and tastes balanced. Lemon juice is acidic and can taste sharp if overcooked, and prolonged boiling can reduce the sauce too far or make it catch on the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chive, butter, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chive, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More ham sauce recipes

Grated 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes